Pete Prodoehl, inspired by this robot, created an art bot — the Arco-O-Matic — with servos hot glued to dowels, and a clothespin holding the Sharpie.

So to make it all work we start by putting an 18″x24″ sheet of paper down with a few pieces of tape, and then insert a Ultra Fine Point Sharpie Marker into the C47 (clothespin) and power it up. It then sweeps to the right, and starts drawing arcs. It’ll do this while gradually moving to the left side of the paper. When it’s done, you can switch the marker and run in again, or shift the paper a bit, or flip it upside down. At this point it’s all up to you.

Part of what I like about these art robots is the way the interaction between the machine and the human takes place. The person sort of acts as a “helper” for much of the process, but none of it could happen without the person. The person loads the paper, loads the pen, and starts it all. The machine does the actual drawing, but couldn’t do any of it without human interaction. It’s a symbiotic relationship, which sounds weird, but that’s how I see it.